The American Film Institute in Los Angeles, California, in 2007 honored and updated its "definitive selection of the 100 greatest American movies of all time" from 1998, as determined by more than 1,500 leaders from the American film community.

Read this site's Commentary on AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies (original)
The original 400 Greatest American Films (nominees)

The 400 Nominated Films were feature-length fictional movies produced between 1912 and 1996 with newly-eligible films from 1996 to 2006.

Judgment Criteria for Selection:

• Feature-length: Narrative format typically over 60 minutes in length.
  
  
• American film: English language, with significant creative and/or financial production elements from the United States.
  
  
• Critical Recognition: Formal commendation in print, television, and digital media.
  
  
• Major Award Winner: Recognition from competitive events including awards from peer groups, critics, guilds and major film festivals.
  
  
• Popularity Over Time: This includes success at the box office, television and cable airings, and DVD/VHS sales and rentals.
  
  
• Historical Significance: A film's mark on the history of the moving image through visionary narrative devices, technical innovation or other groundbreaking achievements.
  
  
• Cultural Impact: A film's mark on American society in matters of style and substance.

In previous years, the AFI produced other lists:

AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies (1998)
AFI’s 100 Years…100 Stars/Legends (1999)
AFI’s 100 Years…100 Laughs (2000)
AFI’s 100 Years…100 Thrills (2001)
AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions (2002)
AFI's Heroes and Villains (2003)
AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs (2004)
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes (2005)
AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers (2006)
AFI's 100 Greatest American Films - 10th Anniversary Edition (2007)

Facts about the 10th Anniversary List:

Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star are the films
that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the 100 Greatest Films

• Of the films that remained on the list, 36 improved their ranking and 38 saw their ranking decline.
  
  
• Raging Bull (1980) (# 4) and Vertigo (1958) (# 9) made their top 10 debuts in the new list, replacing The Graduate (1967) (formerly # 7 in 1998) and On the Waterfront (1954) (formerly # 8 in 1998).
  
  
• Five of the top 10 films in the 2007 list won Academy Awards for Best Picture and all but two ( Vertigo (1958) and Singin' in the Rain (1952)) were nominated.
  
  
• The 1970s was the most represented decade with 20 entries.
  
  
• Three years tie for most represented year, each with four films:
  1982 ( E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Tootsie (1982), Blade Runner (1982), Sophie's Choice (1982));
  1976 (Network (1976), Taxi Driver (1976), Rocky (1976), All the President's Men (1976));
  1969 (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Easy Rider (1969), The Wild Bunch (1969)).
  
  
• Director Steven Spielberg had the most films on the list with five ( E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jaws (1975), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Schindler's List (1993)).
  
  
• Directors Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Billy Wilder each had four films on the list.
  
  
• James Stewart ( Vertigo (1958), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and Rear Window (1954)) and Robert De Niro ( Raging Bull (1980), The Godfather Part II (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), and GoodFellas (1990)) were the most-represented actors with five films apiece.
  
  
• Faye Dunaway, Katharine Hepburn and Diane Keaton were the most represented leading female actors with three films each.
  
  
• The most represented genre in the top 100 list is comedy films, with 17 films.
  
  
• Six musicals (Cabaret (1972), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Sound of Music (1965), West Side Story (1961), The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)) made the top 100 list for 2007, as did two animated films ( Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and newly-nominated Toy Story (1995)).
  
  
• Five westerns made the top 100 list for 2007: The Searchers (1956) (# 12), High Noon (1952) (# 27), Shane (1953) (# 45), Unforgiven (1992) (# 68), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) (# 73), and The Wild Bunch (1969) (# 79).
  
  
• Five science-fiction films are represented in the top 100: Star Wars (1977) (# 13), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (# 15), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) (# 24), A Clockwork Orange (1971) (# 70), and Blade Runner (1982) (# 97).
  
  
• Six silent films made the 2007 list: City Lights (1931) (# 11), The General (1927) (# 16), Intolerance (1916) (# 49) - the oldest film on the list, The Gold Rush (1925) (# 58), Modern Times (1936) (# 78) and Sunrise (1927) (# 82).
  

Commentary on the 2007 List:

Classics that did not make the list at all included Top Hat (1935), The Adventures Of Robin Hood (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), Pinocchio (1940), Meet John Doe (1941), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Lady Eve (1941), The Quiet Man (1952), Meet Me In St. Louis (1944), Notorious (1946), and Out of the Past (1947), to name just a few.

A number of the films that were dropped from the 2007 list shouldn't have been, such as Fantasia (1940) and The Third Man (1949).

There were a notable number of appropriate additions, however, such as The General (1927), Sullivan's Travels (1941), Swing Time (1936), Blade Runner (1982), and Sunrise (1927).